Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 28 March 2023
79. Deputy Claire Kerrane asked the Minister for Social Protection if she will consider extending the reduced qualifying period for community employment, CE, schemes from 12 months on the live register to nine months for all qualifying social welfare payments, in view of the recent announcement made regarding Ukrainian nationals; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [15345/23]
View answerI welcome the recently announced changes to CE schemes. However, I do not believe they go far enough. With regard to the reduction of the qualifying period from 12 months to nine months in respect of Ukrainian refugees, will the Minister of State consider extending that reduction across the board given the high and growing number of vacancies on CE schemes?
CE schemes across the country play a vital role in providing essential services to local communities. Since December 2021, the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and I have been pleased to announce a number of reforms and enhancements to the scheme including, most recently, the extension of the criteria of those who can participate on CE schemes to the adult dependents of those in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance and, in support of Ukrainian nationals living here, a reduction in the live register qualifying period from 12 to nine months. This reduction is designed to take into account the fact that many Ukrainian refugees spent a number of months on supplementary welfare allowance prior to transferring to their jobseeker's payments. As a consequence, if we had not reduced the qualifying period, many people who arrived last March would not be eligible for a CE placement until June 2023. This change enables the Department and CE sponsor organisations to work with and provide further support and assistance to Ukrainians to improve their language skills and integrate with their communities while also supporting those schemes in continuing to deliver vital local services.
CE is an active labour market programme designed to provide long-term unemployed people and other disadvantaged people with an opportunity to engage in useful work within their communities. It is important that the scheme continues to be available for those who would benefit most from their participation. This continues to be those who have been out of work for a year. There are no plans to change the 12-month eligibility rule at present. The eligibility criteria for CE continue to be kept under active review by my Department to ensure the best outcomes for individual participants, to support vital community services and to take account of changes to the labour market.
I thank the Minister of State for his response. I remember raising concerns with regard to CE and the number of vacancies when there were 1,200, 1,300 and 1,400 vacancies on CE schemes posted online. Today, there are more than 3,600. It is an excellent scheme, as the Minister of State knows. I know he engages with the organisers, which is really important, but, at the end of the day, what has been announced will not go far enough when we have more than 3,600 vacancies and that figure is rising. We really need to go further if those vacancies are to be filled. I met with representatives of a CE scheme last week. There should be 27 participants on the scheme. There are 16. If the rules in respect of eligibility in particular do not change, it will be left with nine. It is not getting referrals from the Department and it is struggling to fill its places. That is seen right across the board. There is also a major issue with Department referrals. In the previous announcement of changes, it was said that referrals would be ramped up. Will the Minister of State give us an update on referrals from the Department, because it is a really important issue?
As the Deputy is aware, I monitor the figures closely. We have changed eligibility criteria and the pool of eligible people twice in the past 12 months. That has allowed us to stay static in the last 12 months, which has been an achievement in itself. There is a constant flow in. The number of starters on CE schemes last month, 594, was high when compared to previous months. In previous months, the number was around the 500 mark. There were 800 in September last year. Obviously, people are also leaving. We are in a static state, which is why we have brought in two new additional measures. The qualified adult measure will broaden the pool by a good few thousand people. Ukrainian refugees are now eligible. The number of these eligible will ramp up in April and May, the months in which the number of people coming to the country peaked. Before we look at further policy changes, we first need to see the impact of this one.
Going on that, perhaps a broadening of that reduction from 12 to nine months beyond just those from our new communities could be looked at later in the year or even after the summer because, at the end of the day, there is a very high number of vacancies. The Minister of State will have been told the same thing I have been, which is that projects are not getting referrals and are struggling to fill places, which is putting really important community services on the line in an awful lot of areas where those services would simply not exist without CE schemes. Scheme supervisors in particular are being put under great pressure. They are not getting referrals from the Department. That needs to be looked at. It has been an issue for a very long time. Schemes are not getting people through and not filling their places. Alarm bells should be ringing when there are 3,600 vacancies and that number is increasing. A very close eye needs to be kept on that. As I have said, I welcome the changes that have been announced. I believe they will make a difference but they need to go further.
The number of vacancies is largely stable, although that is, of course, not good enough. We want to push the number down further. With regard to changes to policy and eligibility, we are open to looking at a lot of them and have made quite a few over the past 12 months, as I have said. On the 12-month rule, I am reluctant to go there because the scheme is designed for a cohort of people who generally find it difficult to get employment and our general marker for that is 12 months' unemployment. I am not ruling it out but it is not the first change we think of with regard to broadening the eligible pool. The Deputy will see a change in the next few months.
I could be proven wrong when we come back here. In terms of the eligible pool of people, it will increase significantly, particularly in April and May.
As always, we will monitor. We will see how the policy changes impact the referral rates.
I should say as well that there are increased intensive efforts on the referral side from officials around the country and there has been a new structure to bump up the referrals.
